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Maybe a silly idea, but here’s a solution to prevent financial censorship: make the game free. Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. There’s

Maybe a silly idea, but here’s a solution to prevent financial censorship: make the game free. Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. There’s actually a lot of options for Steam if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content.

gs17 1y ago
> if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content. The problem is that they aren't being told "we won't let people buy this through us", they're told "this needs to go entirely or no more credit cards for you".
- jacobsimon 1y ago
  Fair enough - so in reality they _are_ being pressured directly to remove the content and it has nothing to do with selling the products. A slippery slope indeed!
  - gs17 1y ago
    And it proves that it's not about these games having high risks of fraud and chargebacks.
pfisch 1y ago
F2P games are very different in design from regular games(and far worse imo) You can't even realistically have a F2P game that requires a high spec machine because of how the market works.
- zer0tonin 1y ago
  There's quite a few F2P games requiring high spec machines, Throne & Liberty for example.
jandrese 1y ago
> Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits That don't use Visa/Mastercard? The bans aren't coming from the platforms but from the payment processors.
WorldMaker 1y ago
Most of the games that have been deindexed on itch.io and some of the ones that were banned/removed were free or Pay-What-You-Want/Donation-Ware (some even via Patreon or SubscribeStar rather than itch.io's own payment processing). The problem isn't just "the Payment Processor doesn't want to support this game" but also "this game shows Guilt-By-Association that your platform's money might go to 'criminals' or 'sinners'." Guilt-By-Association is real gross, but a large part of the current fight, too, especially looking at itch.io's payment processor-required actions, not just Steam's.
axus 1y ago
"Citizen's United" wasn't _wrong_ about money being a type of speech, that shouldn't be censored. Only wrong about who the first amendment is for.
gqgs 1y ago
>Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most transactions are performed through centralized exchanges which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.

gs17 1y ago

> if they aren’t being pressured directly to remove the content. The problem is that they aren't being told "we won't let people buy this through us", they're told "this needs to go entirely or no more credit cards for you".

jacobsimon 1y ago
Fair enough - so in reality they _are_ being pressured directly to remove the content and it has nothing to do with selling the products. A slippery slope indeed!
- gs17 1y ago
  And it proves that it's not about these games having high risks of fraud and chargebacks.

pfisch 1y ago

F2P games are very different in design from regular games(and far worse imo) You can't even realistically have a F2P game that requires a high spec machine because of how the market works.

zer0tonin 1y ago
There's quite a few F2P games requiring high spec machines, Throne & Liberty for example.

jandrese 1y ago

> Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits That don't use Visa/Mastercard? The bans aren't coming from the platforms but from the payment processors.

WorldMaker 1y ago

Most of the games that have been deindexed on itch.io and some of the ones that were banned/removed were free or Pay-What-You-Want/Donation-Ware (some even via Patreon or SubscribeStar rather than itch.io's own payment processing). The problem isn't just "the Payment Processor doesn't want to support this game" but also "this game shows Guilt-By-Association that your platform's money might go to 'criminals' or 'sinners'." Guilt-By-Association is real gross, but a large part of the current fight, too, especially looking at itch.io's payment processor-required actions, not just Steam's.

axus 1y ago

"Citizen's United" wasn't _wrong_ about money being a type of speech, that shouldn't be censored. Only wrong about who the first amendment is for.

gqgs 1y ago

>Or monetize via another way—ads, subscriptions, credits. All of those are still prone to censorship if the attacking group is motivated enough. Even crypto, which should be the ideal solution to this problem, is not ideal because most transactions are performed through centralized exchanges which can easily blacklist whatever transactions they want.